Mercurius With Crying Dragon by Ádám Dallos

“In a bleeding sunset over Lake Balaton, after an all-encompassing storm, as an orange moon is rising and moustachioed boys make love to weeping dragons on the beach, while, in the reeds, a brownish swan wraps itself around the bull with the bloody eyes, I imagine myself a vampire under a dome. The adolescent boy swaps places with the dragon, the rats have crawled out from under the bed, they’re under the pillow already. I wear a robe of blue, veiny skin, I pull away to dodge the snake’s kiss, while laying my body down on its sharp scales, on the filthy floor tiles of the sauna.The exhibition entitled Mercurius with crying dragon debuts a selection of my new paintings, created over this past year. After my 2018 paintings of black cobras licking themselves in the storm, groups of mating swans among white-tipped waves, and rearing, muscular horses running out of this world, my paintings created in 2019 have grown angrier; the young men sporting their first beard – who have now been given wings – with their penises erect, are embracing dragons in front of a blood-red backdrop.” Ádám Dallos

Ádám Dallos (1986), a uniquely sensitive artist from the generation of young, Central Eastern European figurative painters, lives and works in Budapest. In 2010, he participated in the exhibition Ars Homo Erotica, which was held at the National Museum Warsaw and attracted considerable international attention. His painting was featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue. Since then, he has had yearly solo exhibitions at such venues as Art+Text Budapest, the Blitz Gallery, and the Platán Gallery. His works have been showcased in group exhibitions at the Central Slovakian Gallery in Banská Bystrica, the Museum of Architecture in Wroclaw, and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, to only mention a few. In 2018, he was an artist in residence at the Cité International des Arts Paris.

Photography: Installation views by Dávid Biró, Images of individual works by Gellért Áment. Copyright and courtesy of the artist